J.Y. Company (Chinese: 晶太 pinyin: jīng tài) or simply JY, was a publisher of various bootleg games, most notably Famicom games. They are best known for publishing many of Hummer Team's games. They appear to have been active from at least 1989 to possibly the mid 2000s.

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J.Y. Company is mostly known for publishing Famicom ports that were developed by Hummer Team and Ei-How Yang. These ports are often regarded as being higher quality than most other bootleg Famicom ports. Many of these ports are often released with an extra hack of itself, usually on the same PCB as the original game.

They also made a lot of multicarts, the most common are the 4 in 1. Some had more or less games but almost all of their multis don't have repeats. As well as this, many of them include late NES/Famicom releases rarely found on other multicarts such as Rainbow Islands and Mitsume Ga Tooru.

J.Y. Company hardly ever hacked other publisher's titles. From 1994 to 1998, only two titles they weren't responsible for appeared on their multicarts: Super Donkey Kong 2 and Master Fighter II.

Often in their games, there's a screen containing their logo that can be accessed through a cheat code. Their logo may occasionally show up in the background of certain games as well.

J.Y. Company's earliest activities seems to point around 1989. [1] During 1989 to 1993, they released pirated versions of licensed games under their own covers. They were also responsible for a few Mario hacks such as 7 Grand Dad and Super Bros. 8. They also made the infamous Ball Series 11 in 1 multicart in 1990 which was subsequently reprinted almost every year during the 90s, albeit not by them after a while.

In late 1993, they started a new product line using their name to release mostly multicarts. In 1994, Hummer Team started developing games for J.Y. Company, the first games being Dragon Ball Z 2 and Mortal Kombat II. Around 1995, they've worked with Ei-How Yang but this didn't last very long, with only Mickey Mania 7 getting published while Contra Spirits never got a J.Y. Company release.

Around 1995-1996, one of their supposed competitors, Ka Sheng, has started releasing several J.Y. Company carts under their own line. [2] It's presumed that this was a deal between the two for J.Y. Company to sell their games in territories where Ka Sheng had more of a holding in. (Notably, Russia and Eastern Europe countries) However, this only lasted for several cartridges and Ka Sheng would eventually make mapper hacks of J.Y. Company's games afterwards, suggesting that the deal was ended for unknown reasons.

J.Y. Company would request and provide funds to Hummer Team to make ports of popular games until 1998, when their relationship ended for unknown reasons. (It's been suggested that this is due to the Famicom market declining.) One of Hummer Team's games, King of Fighters '96, was supposed to be released under J.Y. Company but ended up getting cut down and released by Ka Sheng instead. Afterwards, J.Y. Company started to release cheaper multicarts with common games, most of them sharing the same menu screen and the same games. These were likely done by a subcontractor since they lack all the technology used in the previous cartridges. These were all released under various IDs.

Around this time, there were Game Boy Color cartridges being released using a label style similar to J.Y. Company's SC-xx carts. Notably, one of them use the QQ ID that J.Y. Company has also used. Some of these carts also contain games that Good Life have developed for and the single cart releases of those used similar PCBs. Several Super Famicom and Game Boy Advance multicarts have also used a similar label style. It's possible that J.Y. Company has attempted to release games for other consoles, as other companies were more interested in the Game Boy Color and the 16-bit consoles during this time. The Game Boy Advance multicarts also seem to have been programmed by or someone who used to work for Vast Fame, as the ROMs mentions Vast Fame's name.

They ceased their Famicom activities in the early 2000s, selling their remaining PCBs to a Chinese distributor. It's unknown when J.Y. Company fully stopped their activities; the latest possible Game Boy Advance multicart contains the American version of Summon Night: Swordcraft Story which came out in 2006.

A port of the SNES version of Mortal Kombat II. It had a DIP switch variant known as Mortal Kombat III Special that duplicates the roster. J.Y. Company later released a hacked version called Mortal Kombat 3 Special 56 Peoples.

A title hack of Super Fighter III. J.Y. Company released other variants that would duplicate the roster and add extra characters. Since J.Y. Company was the only one responsible for these hacks, it's unknown if they were also behind the original release of Super Fighter III.

The PCB is similar to the suspected Game Boy Color multicarts. It has also shown up on some of those carts.

World Hero (英雄傳)

Famicom

JY-048 shows a clean image of a later reprint's label, suggesting J.Y. Company at least had access to the original art. The World Hero carts that used this label often had the new cover placed over the pre-existing one. [3] It's unknown if J.Y. Company had a role in the original release however.

Hummer Team was credited "Jing Tay" team in Tiny Toon Adventures 6, with "Jing Tay" referring to J.Y. Company.

J.Y. Company was the first company known to pirate Kirby's Adventure although they've hacked it into Wario Land 2.

Both Mortal Kombat II Special and Final Fight 3 seem to not be based off of their finished versions but rather prototype versions. This implies J.Y. Company had access to the prototype versions of their games and handed them to Hummer Team to port but it's unknown how they've gotten the prototypes.